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Anyone who heard rumors that the FBI had pulled warrants to search computers belonging to
Columbus City Schools probably pictured agents storming the district’s Downtown offices.

It didn’t happen.

We heard about the warrants, too, but the lawyer the district hired to handle its student-data
investigation affairs hadn’t. There’s a simple explanation: While the warrants likely existed, the
computers pertinent to the investigation are no longer in the possession of the school
district.

The auditor of state has had them, as we told you last week. When property changes hands between
agencies, there needs to be a paper trail. It seems the FBI has those computers now — no
office-storming required.

• • •

Two vacant Whitehall school-board seats, once held by mother and son, could be replaced by
husband and wife.

Two married couples — Kelly and Kristin Young and Mark Sean and Magdalene Riley — are among the
17 people who applied to replace Ronda Howard and her son, Brandon, both of whom resigned last
month.

School board President Walter Armes said the board plans to appoint its two new board members on
March 28.

The Howards resigned less than a month after Brandon, 21, pleaded guilty to a gun charge.

• • •

Investigators are interviewing teachers as witnesses in the months-long investigation into
student-data manipulation in Columbus schools.

There hasn’t been evidence that teachers played a role in “scrubbing” the district’s student
data; the records show that largely was done by administrators and sometimes their secretaries. It’s
not clear yet how many teachers investigators from State Auditor Dave Yost’s office are
interviewing, but they are not targets of the investigation.

Teachers are meeting with investigators to answer questions about how they kept student data,
including grades and attendance records. Sources say several teachers from Linden-McKinley STEM
Academy have met with the state auditor’s investigators.

There will be more such meetings elsewhere in the district, said union President Rhonda Johnson,
but she did not know details.

• • •

The Columbus teachers union newsletter noted that Columbus Mayor Michael B. Coleman and Eric
Fingerhut, the executive director of the mayor’s education commission, spoke to a group of the
union’s officials on March 7.

Fingerhut told the group that revisions to Columbus’ report card due to the state data-scrubbing
investigation may “plunge the district into ‘Academic Distress,’ which would trigger a takeover of
CCS by the Ohio Department of Education.”

If that were to happen, a five-member panel would be put in place by the state, “effectively
ending ‘local control’ of the district.”

Not noted: The district would need an overall F grade for four straight years. The state plans
to recalculate two years of report cards and would have to reduce them from a C grade to an F, and
then the district would need two more years of F’s for that sanction to kick in, so an emergency
panel doesn’t seem imminent.